18 Comments
User's avatar
Yael Gelardin's avatar

I love your story. You claim that even you didn’t understand it. So how could I? Anyway, it’s weird and that’s cool.

Hamed Karkan's avatar

Beautiful, love the birth of twins and the fact that they were not identical anymore after the "accident". All that told in one paragraph, beautifully minimal.

Alessandro Venturi's avatar

I have a theory about Etgar dream. In the inner of his subconscio Etgar though: " Honey you have to work more! I can t do homework!. 😄

Martin's avatar

I love this so much, and the housekeeping note, and the intro, and that you said that you don’t fully understand the story. So, so much.

Tom Simpson's avatar

Interesting about the editor wanting to exclude this piece. Nimrod was full of weird stories but maybe this was the hardest one to attach some kind of meaning or message to (although I wouldn't say your stories tend to have obvious meanings, and that's a good thing - I would read AI stories if I wanted obvious messages). To me, "Dorable" kind of echoed "Fatso" in that it seemed to be about the role acceptance plays in romantic attachment - accepting imperfections in both your partner and yourself. The stories show how that kind of acceptance isn't really even a sacrifice or a compromise, because it enables the relationship to become deeper and more valuable.

Lor's avatar

Wow this is wonderful and weird. Yes, the world is so very strange. Bizarre and alienating.

Terrance Lane Millet's avatar

That was fun. Nice point of view and psychic distance.

nancy's avatar

I think demonstrates how oblivious one can be to what's going on around us.

Audrey Gran Weinberg's avatar

And what’s with the narrator who doesn’t notice there’s a fuel pump in his backyard - until the Mitsubishi pulls up? Says a lot about his focus…

Etgar Keret's avatar

It’s based on a true writer…

Ana Beatriz's avatar

Your editor felt uneasy cause the story could seem to talk about child abuse and the bringing to conscience of trauma what you'd preferred to keep hidden inside yourself. No healing possible and still the damage done

Ana Beatriz's avatar

Feeling like a witness is safer and pains less

Ana Beatriz's avatar

Freudian of your fragmented ego

John Madrid's avatar

The mulberry tree is what got me. He promises it, never plants it, and the yard ends up with a fuel pump in it instead. By the end he isn't angry about the secret at all, he's just sorry about the tree. That's a strange place for the grief to settle and it works.

Also: your 2006 editor was wrong.

Anat Dagan's avatar

I wouldn’t try to interpret your dream, but… your wife Shira is indeed a source of light, energy and inspiration to many for her art as well as her activism.

Peter Buckman's avatar

You're right: we've moved on from strange to unbelievable and seem infinitely capable of accepting it, or not minding that we can't do much about it. Which has its upside as well as its downside. Except the smell of petrol: is that really something you ever get used to?

Sharron Bassano's avatar

That smell of petrol was ominous and scary to me -- almost a prophesy, metaphorically speaking. Brrr.